Cantonese-learning infants' perception of English stress

Abstract

This study aimed to explore Cantonese-learning infants’ perception of English lexical stress. Specifically, it examined whether perceptual narrowing under tonal exposure facilitate or hinder perceptual sensitivity of non-native suprasegmental contrasts during infancy. Wordlikeness judgement test was conducted with native English speakers (n = 15) for selection of an English-like pseudo-word as stimulus for the infant perceptual test. For the infant perceptual test, modified Visual Habituation paradigm was adopted to determine 4-to-6- month-old (n = 32) and 8-to-10-month-old (n = 32) infants’ ability to distinguish two different stress patterns (i.e. strong-weak versus weak-strong). Results revealed that both younger and older infants were equally sensitive to the changes in stress patterns. This finding suggests that tonal language exposure facilitates infants’ perceptual attention to pitch variations in speech streams, which enables them to maintain the perceptual sensitivity of non-native lexical stress contrasts throughout the developmental process of perceptual narrowing.